Using other peoples resources for basic living

Question

For at least a few weeks, I've been living using others resources. I do not own a cellphone and have no expenses except my car insurance. I'm currently using my car for sleep and transportation. For food, my job has free hot chocolate and green tea (I drink A LOT so I keep my calories up. On my free time at work I look for food left behind at meetings or ask people at lunch. They also have a shower, but I rely on left behind soap. On weekends, I go to Sam's Club or Costco and spend much of the day eating samples. It's free for me since I don't buy anything.

• Is this sustainable for the future?
• Is it possible to start a family with my lifestyle?
• Is there anything else I can do to lower my expenses?

Answer 1

I wouldn't focus on negative answers...

It's ALL POSSIBLE!

Yes it is sustainable... At least for one person as well as you are doing already, dealing with unconscious waste.

MAYBE it will be sustainable for an entire family, moreover if you are all CONSCIOUS human beings and focus on some CURRENT tendencies in that direction around the world (YES, you're not alone!):

• Food:
  • Leftbehind (moreover on dining halls, as well as many other things)
  • in garbage (big supermarkets and restaurants do it every day)
• Shelter / Home:
  • Occuppy (Living on abandoned places)
• Productivity from waste:
  • Urban Agroecoloy (moreover on non-owned land)
  • Artists from garbage mainly from seas which is VERY SAD!
  • Gold in electronics
  • Barter, Trade and Alternative Economies (exchange overproduction without taxes)

Not about waste transformation, but related:

• Hard Money (Non-Fiat currencies)
• Sovereign Citizens or Freemen (living under own laws no matter the country, obviously this doesn't allows you to surpass others laws, there's many movements in many countries, but it's a legal complication in many matters)

As you can see, there's many of this anti-waste tendencies, some being really applied in Germany and France (very conscious countries on waste-transforming which is usually called RECYCLING, which in this continent's society is on pampers). Maybe you could make some research on those countries and their tendencies to find much more useful things.

I'm doing my thing too, and you know what? some of the richest persons I've known have made their way from ground-up through this kind of waste-transforming-tendencies that aren't adopted by the mayority of us (recycling, green bonds, biogas, etc), done massively, but yes, little by little.

For whom this all is MORE sustainable is for the entire world, humanity and mother earth, so I want to give you a BIG THANK YOU! in name of us all, you are a living example and you should SHARE IT.

Internet is information, and information is... POWER!

With enough information you have the power to transform EVERYTHING!

Nothing is created, nor destructed, only transformed. (Laws of Thermodynamics, Conservation of energy and Conservation of mass).

Answer 2

It's reasonable to say that a lifestyle can still be sustainable even if not everybody could live that way. It's like filling a niche in an ecosystem. Obviously we can't all eat discarded/excess meals, but there is certainly room for such behaviour to be part of a system that is sustainable as a whole. You almost certainly can't live that way your whole life though, assuming you live to old age.

It's not sustainable for your health to be consuming hot chocolate as a food, and it's likely the free food samples aren't great either.

Some of those lifestyle choices would be difficult if you get sick, especially if was a disease that required special facilities or equipment. Examples I can think of include difficulty making yourself comfortable if you suffered from a spine problem, public or workplace toilet facilities being inadequate or perhaps inappropriate for some diseases, asthma or respiratory conditions requiring a warmer place to sleep than a vehicle.

Are you driving your car to get to the stores you get free samples from? If so, then you could consider the environmental and monetary cost of running the car (not just fuel, but servicing and wear and tear too) and compare that with the monetary and environmental cost of getting food elsewhere.

Answer 3

No, it's not sustainable.

As per your comment, you're not doing anything economically productive, but you are consuming goods and services. It doesn't matter that those goods and services are free to you at the point of consumption - what matters it the consumption itself, which is happening without you contributing to economic replenishment.

That's not sustainable.

Answer 4

There's a term used which may apply to such a lifestyle: freeganism.

From Wikipedia:

Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans might avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.

Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with "dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting abandoned buildings, and "guerilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.

Freegans have organized themselves a bit, and have a website: freegan.info: strategies for sustainable living beyond capitalism. On this website you could find more information about strategies and even meetings of local like-minded individuals.

However, as @Tim points out in the comments, while the freegan ethos relates to a fundamental rejection of capitalism, your participation in the economy as a worker means you aren't (yet?) a freegan.